How to start viral marketing with my travel site?

Hi, I'm newbie in viral and buzz matketing, have read some from "buzz for dummies" but don't know where/how to start it from? my real estate and travel sites need to be applied with viral marketing but I don't understand it exactly. Please suggest me.

cheers,
Sxperm

 

I consider myself an expert on viral marketing. I've been paid $500 an hour to teach it, so don't think I'm just being negative/pessimistic. It is near impossible to turn that kind of site viral. The only way would be to have something crazy, like, a web cam on rails or wheels that lets people on the web browse through the house in real-time. If you need help programming something like that let me know

 

PayItForward -- to help us understand, could you define viral marketing for us?

Thanks in advance...

 

Viral marketing is when something is so interesting, shocking, fun, unique, or strange that the word of mouth goes out of control- when a large amount people can't stop talking about it, sharing the link, or showing their friends.

Sometimes you can piggyback an idea to try and create a viral campaign, but we do not create viral, but if you understand it then you can increase your odds.

Let me give you an example. I was running a blog over at http://blog.payitforwardonline.com and I posted a blog about a MySpace profile that I found, some girl was saying stuff like "To all the men I slept with in the past couple years I'm just lettin you know I HAVE AIDS AND NOW YOU DO TOO!!". My site received around 25,000 unique targetted visitors within a few days(WITHOUT DIGG), probably because it was shocking to see, to make it worse the girl was black(and we all know America has a lot of racism), and lastly, MySpace is all over the news for being a breeding ground for perverts and psychos, this was proof of that(unless it was a hoax, but no one really knows).

Do you see why an article like that would be viral? It was fueled by "the shock factor", the color of someones skin and the drama and hype of MySpace.

 

I more or less aggree with PayItForward, anyway, I am more optimistic and think there is a way. If not going viral, then at least create some buzz around.

E.g., recently, there was a lot of talk about
http://www.housingmaps.com which is the mashup of Google maps and Craigslist´s real estate listings,

or http://ononemap.com/map which, in fact, does the same in UK.

Here is their traffic comparison (based on Alexa)
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/t...&range=6m&size=medium&y=r&url=housingmaps.com

Check those two, dig deep in your brain, maybe you can add something they do not have and break through.

 

Oooh they are clever!!

How do they do that?

Is it 'technical' to create something like that?

Any info appreciated!!!

 

How about giving away a free dream vacation? Should go viral quick.

 

As for HousingMaps.com not that much.
Just take Craigslist rss, google maps api and six beers.
Then lock yourself for 5 hours with PC and code.
After that time you´ll have google maps based program fed by rss from craigslist, its operation is fully automated from that point, so you can start promoting and linking it.

Oh, yes, then take the beers and drink them.
If you change the order you´ll probably end up coding the css file for 1,5 hours, then throwing it to the bin and just browsing various porn sites.

 

So viral marketing is creating an event, making a statement, setting a challenge etc. that grabs peoples imagination such that they generate publicity for that event, statement or whatever, by word-of-mouth, email etc.

 

Do you know me?!?!

 

On a more serious note

I have had a look at Google Map and MSN Map.

MSN Map just doesnt cut it!! Looks easy to use and appears to do what you need but it is just too easy to lose data, for users to clear your information etc etc

So Google it is.

Now, where did I put that beer?